iOS vs Android Home Screens and the Nexus 7

Well with all the buzz around the Google Nexus 7 I decided to get one. So one thing that I though was really interesting is how the home screens are laid out. I found this a bit odd coming from the iPhone world.













When you compare the two, they sorta look like this.

The Apple devices always home to the left most page. So when you press the home button twice you end up on the left.



How Android is Different

With the Android device, the home page is always in the center. You can navigate two pages to the left or right. But pressing the home button twice always takes you to the center page. Once I figured this out, it made sense.



However, the thing that really threw me off at first was the Android widgets. With iOS, the only thing that shows up on a page are icons or folders. No deviations from that. With Android, you can put Widgets on a page. Widgets are little mini apps that can take anywhere from a row of space to the entire page. The home page on the Nexus 7 is filled with a Google Play widget. It took me quite a bit of playing around to figure this out.



I think Google would be better off to make the widget maybe half a page or smaller. That way, the new apps are installed on the home page and users can see as they are added. Without that sort of behavior it is less than obvious where new app icons get added.



First Impressions

The size and weight of the Nexus 7 are pretty cool. It is a great device for reading books. Although, I do think Google would be better off with their own ePub reader. Finding and installing one took much more work than it should have.



Anyway, I'll add more as I spend more time with it.

Tablet Wars just Heating up with Google Nexus 7

With the Microsoft Surface announcement and now the Google Nexus 7, it would seem we have all the major players entered in the big tablet competition. But wait, there's more! As CNET reports via Boy Genius Report, Amazon is readying two new Kindle tablets for an end of July release. So you may want to wait on that Nexus 7 purchase for a month just to see what the options are.



Nexus 7 Review

CNET has a complete hands on review of the Nexus 7. Basically, a beautiful looking tablet with great performance for only $199. The Nexus has no expansion capabilities (no SD card slot or memory options beyond 16GB). But unless you have a large movie or music collection, this is gonna be just fine for most people. The fact that it is Wifi only should not be a surprise given the price.



There are a couple of key points for me.

• Media - Can Google compete with Apple and Amazon on movies and books and such. To me, there is no clear advantage to going with Google in this area. While there are for Apple and Amazon Prime. My idea. Buy Netflix and offer it for free or at a big discount on your devices. That would get some attention.


• Voice - Can they do better at voice than Siri. I'm waiting for more info on this. Some of the reviews seem to imply you can do voice dictation without an Net connection. That would be cool if it turns out to be true.

Anyway, things are getting very interesting in the summer of 2012!

Microsoft announces Surface Tablet

Well the big Microsoft announcement is here, and what do we find behind the curtain... a tablet! (see details on the Verge) The Microsoft Surface is a 10.6 widescreen tablet with an optional keyboard cover (very slick). Unlike most tablets, it is running Windows 8 on Intel chips. So what was missing from the be launch event?



Price

Microsoft stated the new tablet would be priced competitively with other ultrabook offerings. That is very interesting given that you can get an iPad starting at $399 and most ultrabooks cost around $999. If the device is overpriced I just don't see it selling.



Voice

No mention of a Siri type agent or anything like that. That would seem to be a big oversight.



Battery Life

Running Intel chips, one wonders what the battery life will be. But given that the new Macbook Air runs for about 7 hrs on battery, I would think this is probably not gonna be an issue.



Summary

An interesting device. Will it dethrone the iPad, probably not. Will we get some slick keyboard covers for our iPads? Hopefully!